I have an aversion to technology. I love my computer and everything, it’s not that. My computer is probably the most useful thing I own. But go beyond my general research skills and I tend to freak out. I have a friend, whom I’ve dubbed the anti-me, who loves programming. He’s even designing his own widgets for his Mac. He goes into this near ecstatic state when he talks about anything like it. So when presented with Scratch I was at an impasse. Here was the thing I’d shunned, the thing I’d made fun of.

The amazing thing was that I could actually use it. I don’t mean to say that in the hour total that I played with the program that I’m now an expert in it. Far from it. But it’s hard for me to see what’s so scary about it now. I’m a writer. And I’ll never be a computer programmer. But it’s pretty nice to see that I’m not as idiotic in that realm.

We talked in class about “learned stupidity.” I’ve got a lot of that in the math and computer science realm. You do badly one too many times, you start to think maybe you should do something else. I’m not a writer because I’m not good at math or computer science. I’m a writer because it’s what gives my life meaning. But it’s nice to know that we all have the capability to do something else, and to enrich what we’re already doing.